Several Christian and Jewish organizations that represent millions of Americans, ranging from the Episcopal Church and the Union for Reform Judaism to Mennonites and Unitarian Universalists, filed a demand in a federal court on March 16th, challenging a Trump administration policy that grants immigration agents more freedom to make arrests in churches.
The demand, which was made to the EE. UU. District Tribunal in Washington, supports the idea that the new policy is spreading fear among the redadas, which lowers support for religious services and other important programs of the church. According to the result, the requirement violates the groups’ religious freedom, i.e., their ability to assist migrants, including those who are in the United States illegally.
“We have refugees, immigrants, and people with and without documentation,” said Reverend Sean Rowe, the obispo president of the Episcopal Church.
According to the Associated Press, we cannot freely love while some of us are living in fear. By uniting in response to this call, we are seeking the ability to reunite and fully practice our faith in order to fulfill Jesus’ command to love both our neighbors and ourselves.
The new demand reiterates and expands upon some of the points made in a similar demand made by five congregations on January 27. Later, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a sij were united. It is currently pending at Maryland’s EE. U.U. District Tribunal.
The Department of National Security, or DHS, according to its English name, and its immigration law application agencies are the targets of the new demand. Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, provides this response via electronic mail: We are protecting our schools, churches, and United States that provide assistance in order to prevent juvenile offenders and criminals from abusing these locations and taking refuge there since these offenders knew that under previous administration, the order’s forces could not enter.
The DHS director gives our orderly forces the ability to carry out their work, in general.
In response to the demand’s impulsiveness, the Department of Justice presented a letter on the fourth that described further arguments that might also be applied against the new demand.
In essence, the memorandum stated that the demandants’ request to block the new application policy is based on speculation about a hypothetical future event and is therefore insufficient to issue a judicial order.
The memorandum stated that the application of the immigration law that affects the countries had been allowed for a number of years, and the new policy announced in January merely stated that field agents, using the sense com n y discreci n, could now conduct operations without prior supervisor approval.
A portion of the letter may not apply to the new demand since it argues that the cu queros and their fellow demandants lack the legal foundation to ask for a national court order against the revised application policy.
According to the DOJ brief, any reparation in this case must be tailored exclusively to the designated demandants, stating that no court order should be applied to other religious organizations.
Nearly 1.1 million members of the Iglesia Presbyterian Church (EE. UU.), approximately 1.5 million active members of the Iglesia African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is the oldest denomination in the United States, approximately 1.5 million episcopales in 6700 congregations around the country, and more than a million followers of the same-reformist Juda are among the demandants in the new demand.
Among the other demandants are the Iglesia Christian Church, which has about 3000 members; the Iglesia Church of the Brethren, which has about 780 members; the Convenci n Bautista Hispana de Texas, which has about 1100 Hispanic-American churches, among others.
“It is difficult to ignore the massive scale of the demand,” said Kelsi Corkran, who was working with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University.
The demandants united because their writings, ense anzas, and traditions provide unquestionable unity on their religious obligation to accept and serve refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in their medium without taking into account the documentation or legal status.
Prior to the recent Trump administration change, Corkran stated that immigration agents often needed a court order or other specific authorization to conduct operations in schools and hospitals, among other reasonable locations.
According to AP, “it’s ir a cualquier parte, en cualquier momento.” They now have a great deal of authority to take action, and they have made it clear that they will target all undocumented individuals.
cite a recent incident in which a man was arrested outside of his family’s church in the Atlanta area while a service was being held in the interior.
The request contains information from some of the demandants regarding how their operations may be impacted because the people may be afraid to use the resources or services they provide.
Despite criticizing Trump’s anti-immigration policies, the European Union’s Obispos Cat licos Conference, which leads the nation’s largest delegation, does not agree with the demand. Pope Francisco issued a significant rebuke to the deportation plan, arguing that forcing people to leave their country because of their illegal immigration status deprives them of their natural dignity and ends badly.
Concerns about the new arrest policy are not shared by many religious conservatives and legal experts in the EE.U.
According to Mat Staver, founder of the Christian conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel, churches are for the cult and not for illegal activity or for sheltering those who engage in it.
Simply put, fugitives and criminals are not immune to the law because they enter a place of cult, as stated by the electronic mail. This is not a religious liberty issue. No one has the right to openly violate the law and disobey the order’s forces.
Professor Cathleen Kaveny, who teaches in Boston College’s department of theology and faculty of rights, asks whether the demanders will succeed in using the religious liberty argument, but she suggests that Trump’s administration may not be wise in ignoring the traditional view of churches as places of sanctuary for vulnerable people.
“These buildings are different, almost like embajadas,” he said. As members of an eternal nation, they are present in the churches.
To translate the original English content into Spanish, artificial intelligence is used. A Hispanic-speaking periodist revised the text.
